To Conan Exiles, a ton of new content such as sieges, mounts, new thralls, and religions has been promised at GDC and PAX East. These will now come into the game through weekly content updates.
Conan Exiles excited many people even as an unfinished early access version full of bugs. This was partly due to the complete nudity option in the game, which did not shy away from wildly swinging penises, but also because of the cool barbarian setting and the many efforts that developer Funcom regularly put into the game.
Thus, the announcements by the developers at GDC and PAX East were received positively, introducing features like sieges, invasions, new thralls, mounts, and magic for the 2017 roadmap.
Conan Exiles – Weekly Content Updates
The mentioned features are all set to release in 2017, as Conan Exiles plans to stay in early access for just under a year. But when will the new stuff come? Probably very soon, as colleagues at DualShockers interviewed Funcom lead developer Joel Bylos for nearly an hour and got some cool information out of him.
The most important news: They now want to focus on new content in the updates. So far, patches have almost always been bug fixes, but now the worst bugs are done, and they can focus on new content, which is expected to come out weekly. There will be new things in Conan Exiles every week, especially the upcoming patch is likely to be substantial.
Conan Exiles – New Weapons, Colors, and “Decay System”
The highlights of this week’s upcoming update include several long-awaited features, including:
- The complete “Decay System,” which has been renamed to “Ruins System” because it mainly involves making abandoned objects and building components disappear. Used buildings do not constantly lose hit points. The system was partially in the game before but not officially active. Now the full program is coming.
- Eight new weapons, based on the weapon types already in the game, including new hammers and spears.
- The dyeing system
- New animations of thralls, which you can now actually see toiling at the workstations.
- A rebalance of the crafting and weapon system. Therefore, there is a free respec with the update.
Thralls, Mounts, New Gods, and “The Purge” – Plans for the Coming Weeks and Months
After the currently planned update, new content updates should come to the barbarian survival MMO every week. However, not just in large updates, but in small patches that incrementally implement the content. The following information was provided:
- Thralls will become more important and play a role in many upcoming updates, for example, as crews for siege equipment.
- More types of thralls will include alchemists, animal tamers, and sorcerers. Even more new thralls are expected with the highland biome.
- Thralls should later also get programmable AI, allowing them to be assigned various tasks and distinguish between friend and foe.
- Later, thralls will also need to sleep and eat, so provisions for them will need to be stored.
- Thralls should also be able to receive their own equipment assigned by the player.
- Funcom is still unsure how much thralls should be used to gather food and resources, as this could undermine the exploration aspect of the game.
- There will still be a respec system via yellow lotus potion, but they are considering a cooldown timer so that people do not constantly redistribute their skills and undermine the limitations of the system.
- Mounts will come at the earliest before the new biome or shortly thereafter, in late summer. It is possible that a camel or a similar beast (donkey?) may be available as a test mount before.
- The invasion system, called “The Purge,” is already complete on paper, but they want to finish the siege system first. The developers are still examining whether the invaders will use siege equipment.
- “The Purge” will appear in the form of an invading army that shows up in marching formation in the north, east, or west of the map. The troops will then spread out and march towards the largest player base. On the way, they will devastate everything and everyone they encounter. Affected players will be warned by signal fires.
- There will be different types of purges. An invasion could be, for example, a wild barbarian horde that slaughters everything. Another group could be a well-organized army with command hierarchies.
- Players should actively counter the invasion and stop it through raids and guerrilla tactics.
- Through the purge, players will be able to acquire special thralls that exist only there. It is possible that there will even be legendary figures from the Conan world that can be captured and enslaved.
- Server admins should be able to determine when The Purge occurs or disable the feature completely.
- Funcom plans to provide a survey tool in the future, allowing players to indicate what they want next. Since the updates for the new biome and the sieges are already fixed, player feedback will probably only influence the subsequent updates.
- There will be new building variants as well as new resources and weapons, including star metal. Buildings may receive a value indicating how well they protect against cold or heat.
- There will be new gods, including Jhebbal Sag, Ymir, Zath, and Derketo. A god is expected to join in the new biome (most likely Ymir), but they plan to implement one or two more gods beforehand. It may even happen that Crom occasionally smites an avatar to ensure equality.
- Gods will become even more jealous in the future, such as Mitra, who should not tolerate any other shrines beside him.
- For the religions , there will be a doctrine system. For example, a Set follower commits to never attack a snake in-game again. In return, he will be immune to poison or receive other bonuses.
- Funcom is taking inspiration from the new Zelda game Breath of the Wild and wants to incorporate more “Zelda-like content” into the combat system. More ragdoll effects are planned, which will also affect living characters, for example, when falling or slipping on oil.
- There should be roads where you can move faster. Additionally, there may be chariots.
- Through the siege system, there should also be ways to access previously unreachable player fortresses.
- The Xbox version of Conan Exiles is already running but needs a lot of testing and controller optimization. There are no plans for the Nintendo Switch, but they want to clarify with Microsoft whether there can be a Windows 10 version so that PC users can set up servers for Xbox players.
- Funcom is currently hiring new employees to better manage the work.
Also interesting: Conan Exiles – How naked barbarians saved an MMO studio
